Typically, a thermal simulation on a structural component requires imposition of thermal boundary conditions, such as convective heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and reference temperature (Tref) in order to model a convective heat flux from structure to fluid. The convective HTC is generally closely related with flow Reynolds number, flow geometry and thermal conditions on a heat transfer surface of the structural component. To define the convective HTC, the Tref is needed besides a wall temperature (TW), an area (A) and a heat flux (q). Selection of the Tref for different flow settings, including film cooling, jet impingement with cross flows and mixing flow in a straight duct with or without internal heat source and so on can vary significantly. Typically, an unstructured computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is carried out on fluid part of structural domain to determine the convective HTC and Tref, which are then used in the thermal simulation of the structural component.
However, it is typically a very difficult task to determine the convective HTC and Tref from unstructured CFD simulation results. Existing techniques use physical reasoning, post processing of the unstructured CFD simulation results and/or prior knowledge of a range of expected values. For example, if fluid flow in the structural component is dominated by natural convection, then expected convective HTC can have a range of 0 to <10 W/m^2K. Further, thermal stratification based on vertical coordinate is expected. Based on the prior knowledge, simulation domain of the structural component is usually split into vertical components. Then an average of the split structural component is determined and used as the Tref in an equation, such as the one below to compute the convective HTC as the values of A, Tw and q are known.
      H    ⁢                  ⁢    T    ⁢                  ⁢    C    =      q          A      ⁡              (                  Tw          -          Tref                )            
Wherein, HTC is convective heat transfer coefficient (W/m^2K), A is area (m^2), Tw is wall or surface temperature (K or C), q is a heat flux and Tref is reference temperature (K or C).
The above existing techniques analyze difference zones of the structural component manually and identify dominant type of heat transfer mechanism, for example, natural convection, mixed convection, jet impingement and so on. These techniques are based on subjective process.